First and foremost, Insanity is very very hard! But not as hard as it might seem. Don't expect any of the fights to be easy here. Some fights are harder then others but all of the battles will get you killed if you're not careful. If you know what you're doing and keep a cool head you should be able to complete the game without too much trouble, but make no mistake you will need to work for it.
Now for some details...
I. Play the Game on a Lower Difficulty First
Insanity is meant for people who have already completed the game, so it's a good idea to make sure you do that first. Playing it on Hardcore is particularly useful since it will get you used to the various defenses that everyone in the game will have without being too difficult about it. Even if you already beat the game on Veteran I would advice making sure you can beat the game on Hardcore before you try it on Insanity for this very reason.
In addition to the practice, beating the game once will give you huge bonuses for the second time around. Better experience gains and huge resource bonuses. In fact if at all possible you should be Importing a ME1 save, preferably with a rich level 60 character. The stacking bonuses are far more helpful overall, you'll start off at a higher level with your Paragon/Renegade bonuses, this will make moving through ME2's Insanity that much easier.
II. Upgrade as Much as Possible
Simply put the sooner you get your upgrades the easier the game will be beat later on. You can save the Ship upgrades till later so long as you make sure to pick them up before the suicide mission. You can ignore them entirely if you don't care about saving all of your crew, though I highly recommend it as having more team options available will be very helpful, even in the final mission. Technically you don't have to get every upgrade possible to beat the game, but the more upgrades you do get the better things will go.
While some people might prefer focusing on their own upgrades over the entire squad, I would advise getting the additional squad upgrades as well since having stronger team members will make some missions a lot easier. That said it's alright to focus on the upgrades you will use most first. In my case as an Infiltrator I was looking for Sniper Rifle upgrades as much as possible, for example, which meant doing things like completing Garrus's Loyalty mission as soon as it became available.
The bonus resources you get from importing again are huge as it will let you start getting all of the upgrades you will need. You should have all the Eezo you will ever need, for example, though there are good reasons to get more. Even then you will need to gather more resources to get everything. There is simply no way to avoid scanning planets for resources if you want to get everything you'll need. Fortunately there is far more resources available then you will ever need. There are a number of guides on how to make resource gathering easier so I won't go into any great detail, but I will give you a few tips that work for me.
First get the probe bay and scanner upgrades right away, as these let you gather resources that much faster sooner. Second, you only need to bother with planets with a lot of resources, if when you start the scanner the planet shows up as anything other then "Rich" or "Good" just don't bother with it and move on. In fact I only stuck with the Rich planets and had an over abundance of resources by the end of my game. Indeed towards the end I only bothered to look for resources on planets that also had an N7 mission for me. Also while scanning you want to grab as much resources with as little work as possible. Meaning if you're not seeing a high peek on your scanner for a given element, don't bother trying to mine it.
One more thing, I still recommend picking up Eezo where ever you find it, even if you probably won't need any more for upgrades. The reason is two fold. One it's very sparce generally so you're not going to find it too often throughout the game unless you're REALLY looking for it. Two, even after you get every single upgrade you can always use the research to change your build and even to change you bonus power at any time. The latter is pretty huge as it lets you customize your build for specific missions. You may want to, for example, swap in Shockwave for a mission with a lot of Husks in it, or maximize Heavy Incinerate to help against those Scions and Pretoreans.
This, fortunately enough, leads right into our next point.
III. Specialize!
There are not enough points or enough upgrades to get everything maxed out in the game, and intentionally so. Beating out enemies on Insanity means being at your best, and that means specializing with whatever you do best. This part requires you to really think carefully about your own playstyle and what works best for you. Build wise you will want to maximize the skills you use most in order to get their evolved powers. These level 4 abilities can be game changers so make sure you get them as soon as possible.
To use my Infiltrator as an example, I made sure to have my Tactical Cloak maxed out first before I started putting points in other abilities. This was followed by the Assassin specialization in my class skill. The reason for that is I was specializing my sniper abilities. That meant maximizing my weapon damage as much as possible. With the right weapon ammo, the right conditions, I had no trouble one shotting enemies with a headshot as a result. This was essential as you would quickly run out of ammo if you can't kill enemies quickly enough.
This also means not messing around with any of the bonus weapon talents you can pickup in the collector's ship. For every class there is one obvious choice for the best weapon upgrade. ( for example with the Infiltrator I'm always picking up the Widow ) If for some reason you prefer using some other weapon then the one offered you may be playing the wrong class.
IV. Don't Forget your Teammates
One advantage this game gives you is it allows you to pick from a pretty big selection of squad members. Use that to your advantage. You will want to specialize your own build for a specific purpose so you should do the same thing with your teammates. In this way you can tailor every squad member towards their strengths, as well as come up with the ideal combination of abilities to make each mission much easier to pull off. As many squad members will have similar abilities and roles you can tweak each one to better fit a particular need. Then you pick abilities that compliment your own, cover your weaknesses, or is entirely geared towards a specific mission, up to you.
Samara and Jack, for example, are both Biotic specialists, but you can tailor one to use even more biotic abilities, like Samara, while the other can be geared for more weapon damage, like Jack - which works really well with her Warp Ammo ability. Likewise getting teammates that can give ammo powers to the whole team will make things much easier especially if you're a class without an ammo power of your own.
On a related note, though this should be obvious as well, do every single one of the Loyalty missions. Even if you don't upgrade the added loyalty power this unlocks, having an extra, often very powerful ability on hand is quite a no brainer when it comes to Insanity.
And there you go, I hope you all find this little guide useful in helping you with our own Insanity!
Retour en haut
